Reminder that you should avoid what3words. Still unfortunate that some governments fell into using them.<p><a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-.." rel="nofollow">https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-...</a>.<p>> The algorithm used to generate the words is proprietary. You are not allowed to see it. You cannot find out your location without asking W3W for permission.<p>> If you want permission, you have to agree to some pretty long terms and conditions. And understand their privacy policy. Oh, and an API agreement. And then make sure you don't infringe their patents.<p>> You cannot store locations. You have to let them analyse the locations you look up. Want to use more than 10,000 addresses? Contact them for prices!
This reads exactly like a press release from W3W, the private entity. I'm not clear on why the BBC thought it would be within their rights to publicise it in this way, other than they didn't know they were basically advertising a product (NOT doing so is a cornerstone of the BBC philisophy).<p>It's also entirely unclear to me why the emergency services dispatchers wouldn't just ask a caller to read out their GPS location from any webservice which can report it. Hell, they could set up "999.gov.uk" or similar to show exactly their GPS location.
This sounds awfully like a PR puff piece. (In fact a link to it is liked by their PR person <a href="https://twitter.com/miriamfrankLDN/likes" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/miriamfrankLDN/likes</a>, and the images come straight from their PR archive: <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S-kYBJIjhfkIElyONvod-UMYT5CcE_Dq" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S-kYBJIjhfkIElyONvod...</a>)<p>If they had a smartphone with GPS and data connectivity so they could download an app, they could use that to share their exact coordinates without having to download this proprietary app that wants to copyright the concept of location.<p>Just on my homescreen alone I have 4 apps that can already share my exact location: Google Maps, Apple Maps, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger
Whether this article is a puff piece, i think is less important (though it sure seems it to me). The important aspect here is that for some people GPS is failing them; and to me it's an UI/UX problem.<p>For example...Why do developers use text names for variables in their programs, and why don't they just use binary - which are clearly more precise? </sarcasm><p>If this is in fact a proprietary thing, then I really dislike that. If something is actually, supposedly this useful, then it should be public domain. However, I'll give credit to the founders of what3words for attempting to solve an issue that they ran into (to scratch their itch as it were). Would "fixing" the delivery issue with the government service (postal service in the original case) be the appropriate solution? Would better UI for current GPS apps be another solution? Maybe, probably...But the founders took a hypothesis and ran with it to test it out; kudos to them for that. Clearly, it is working for some people. While no one might argue for the benefits of precision that conventional GPS coordinates bring, what is clear - in real life - is that some people could benefit from an alternative UI for describing their location.<p>So, a puff piece, yeah sure; it seems it to me. Nifty and novel concept for using an alternative "language" for indicating and describing location; yep. Is it great? I guess we'll see. Does it have to be a whole, different thing, or can it be a layer on top of legacy GPS? Who knows?<p>Do <i></i>YOU<i></i> have a better alternative???
Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something?<p>>I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said.<p>Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
Prior discussions:
- <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15579017" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15579017</a>
- <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614198" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614198</a><p>They summarise as "proprietary & commercial, not obvious to humans without the service, and not compatible with maps."
If you're looking for a compact addressing system, have a look at the Google-developed, openly-available plus codes. <a href="https://plus.codes/" rel="nofollow">https://plus.codes/</a>
Something's rotten with article. It resembles an advertisement more than a news article.<p>If they had a cell phone and was lost in a forest why didn't they just boot up maps (they had bandwidth enough to download an app) and walk out of there?
This is a repost of something that was posted today already : <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20702995" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20702995</a>